Alternative Title

Artificial creatures : development of organism starting with a single cell

Abstract

Artificial creature development is a growing research field. Since the past twenty years, many techniques appear to simulate artificial creature with different scales : starting with the simulation of their behaviour at the beginning of the 90s, we then have continue by modifying their morpholgy to be adapted to their environment. More recently, artificial embryogenesis take a leaf out of living developmental mechanisms to generate smaller creatures composes of around ten to thousands cells. The aim of their systems is, on the first hand, to better understand living system and, on the other hand, to produce behavioural models for the future modular robots. After having studied these different simulation scales, we observe that no traversal model that allows a multi-scale simulation of creatures exists. The goal of this work is to develop a complete creature starting from a unique cell, which contains different organs and high-level functionalities. The aim of this PhD thesis is to build the chemical model of this simulator set. With the intention, we propose a new model based on a strong simplification of the components. This metabolism is too much forgotten on existing development models even if it is the base of the living organisms. Across various experiments we did, we proved that our model is able to produce different organs and to assemble them to produce a more complex organism. We also present the possibility to produce a particular shape for an organism. Finally, we have observed that important capacities of self-reparation are inherent to the model. This developmental model is the first simulator that will be included in a simulator set working in different scales of the creature. We start to imagine a physical and a hydrodynamical simulator that will allow us to put our creature in a physical world with Newtonian laws and a hydrodynamical world that responds to Navier and Stokes equations.